Windows7 on ICH5 non-RAID

Hello, first post:

Thanks for this wonderful site.

I am researching the poor performance of the single 500GB SATA II drive connected to the SATA I, port 0 on my ASRock 775i65G R3.0 motherboard. The issue I have is that periodically, while copying files or testing drive performance with HDTune, I get serious drops in read performance to 1.5MB/s, down from an average around 93 MB/s. This is driving me batty, and I have yet to discover what causes this. I would appreciate any assistance or advice anyone might have.

So far, it seems from what I see here and elsewhere that ICH5 is a hybrid or early supporter of SATA, disguising SATA drives as IDE for ease and compatibility back in the day. From searching this forum, it appears there are no standard or modded drivers that can improve ICH5 performance under Win7_x86. I also have tested with disabling the SATA optical drive on the second channel (SATA port 1), but to no effect. I have also tried enabling and disabling the standard IDE channels, also with no effect.


Systems I am tweaking, for which I will be sure to return here from time to time:

In Regular Use:
ASRock X99 Extreme6 - Windows 8.1_x64, main workstation
ASRock Z97E-ITX_ac - Windows 8.1_x64, HTPC
Gigabyte GA-G41M-Combo - Windows 8.1_x64, wife’s computer (replaced an ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA, shorted by an ATI AGP card off eBay. My main machine for years; still crying! At least the Gigabyte is far faster, using the same components.)
ASRock 775i65G 3.0 - Windows 7_x86, HTPC/workstation to be gifted to a friend

For Hobby use:
MSI Pro266TD Master-LR - Windows XP, dual Tualatin hobby gaming system
Abit VH6T - Windows 98SE, single Tualatin hobby gaming system, ISA slot for HPIB card connection to system below
HP 150 Touchscreen - MS-DOS 3.2, legacy fun system; first I ever owned, plan to connect it to the internet somehow using a text browser and dial-up modem
Also waiting to stand in for the MSI, a venerable Abit VP6 Dual PIII system, my favorite in many ways.

Some of these systems would greatly benefit from some BIOS modding. The MSI has a modded BIOS to get the Promise RAID to full functionality. The Ait VP6 is famous for never accepting dual Tualatins with a Lian-Li slot 370 adapter, even if many have tried. Some clear day I hope to fool with the BIOS, but would need a standalone reprogrammer and extra chips, so not today.


PS - Not rich! It obviously took many decades of not throwing things away, and making excuses to the wife, to make this collection.

@ Hlafordlaes:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

Since
a) Intel has never released an non-AHCI IDE driver and
b) your on-board Intel ICH5 SATA Controller does not support the AHCI standard features,
it will be not easy to help you.
Questions:
1. Which SATA driver are you currently running on your ICH5 system?
2. Which are the HardwareIDs of the on-board Intel SATA Controller, which is listed by the Device Manager?

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

Thanks for the reply. Let’s see:

HW IDs of the Controllers:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24DB - "82801EB Paralllel Ultra ATA-24DB"
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_24D1 - "82801EB Serial Ultra ATA-24D1"

Drivers (on both):
atapi.sys
ataport.sys
intelide.sys
pciidex.sys
All listed as from MS, version 6.1.7600.16385

If I use the inf files found on this site for the ICH5, these of course update the descriptions. Right now I am testing the hard disk for bad sectors and cannot report which *.sys files appear using your inf files; I imagine the same. I get the same sharp drops to 1.5 MB/s under HDTune using either set of infs.

Thanks, only the latter ones are interesting, because the P-ATA Controller doesn’t support S-ATA drives.

Yes, they all are MS in-box drivers.
Since your Intel SATA Controller is obviously supported, there is no need for any modding of the INF files.

Which INF files do you mean?
The Intel Chipset Device INF files do not have any real function (except transfering the message for the OS, that an Intel driver is neither needed nor available, and giving the Intel SATA Controller a special Intel name).

Understood. Any suggestions for debugging the sporadic sequential read slowdown to 1.5 MB/s? The drive is fairly new, but I am of a mind to put it through a low-level format. I’d like to spare myself the bother, since it may not help, so am looking for hints.

I don’t have any precise suggestion, because I don’t know the source of the issue.

I own an Abit VP6 runs like new. My appologies for posting on an old thread but yes peple did successfully mod VP6 to run tualatins and the motherboard chipset typically died in 2 years oafter the mod. So not only was it stupid but it almost killed them all. Last I checked a VP6 complete with bios manual fetched a russian over $900 US on ebay.
Mine doesn’t have the accessories but its got a safe place to become the last alive. 20 years old now.